Earlier this week a friend of mine told me about a conversation he had with another friend of his. This person chose to make a decision detrimental to their health and well-being. In response, my friend responded in frustration, ‘OK. You make your choice…. may your gods go with you’.

What I think he was trying to say was, ‘I don’t think this is going to turn out well. So whatever god or gods you have – and I don’t stand in judgment over you on this point – I hope they go with you, because you’re going to need all the help you can get’.

On hearing his comment, I cringed inside. ‘Don’t say that’, I thought, ‘There’s only one God, not many gods, and your friend really needs a relationship with the true and living God’. But as I thought about it some more, I came to realise that the phrase he used made perfectly good sense. Whatever choices we make in life, our gods will always go with us. It’s inevitable.

Worship many gods, serve false idols, and these gods will follow you so that you live in constant fear, desperately trying to appease this god and that one without ever finding release. Live for money, and greed will never be far away, destroying your life and relationships. Live for pleasure and your god will tantalise briefly, but eventually leave you sad, alone, and bereft. Live for the true and living God and in him, and in him only, will you reap a harvest of life and joy and peace through Jesus Christ.